Part 2

"Oh," said Dundon. And then after a while he said, "Let's hope there's nobody alive in there."

"If he is," Web said, "he's somebody we don't need. There's nothing wrong with the reflector. He could have light-signaled any time he wanted to."

Dundon was silent. Web pushed open the door to the next room, which would be the radio shack, and waited. Then he peeked inside. There was no one here either.

"Empty," Web said.

"Stop for a minute," Dundon said. "Put your helmet against the wall."

"I already did," Web said, but he did it again.

"Do you hear anything?"

"Nope. Quiet as a ... grave."

"Keep listening as you go along."

Good idea. And then he thought of another good idea. He called out to Joe Falk.

"Yes?"

"I just wanted to know if you were still out there."

"I don't leave without one hell of a yell," Falk chuckled.

"And you don't leave without me either." Web faced the next door, the tension mounting. He could not get over the feeling that there had to be somebody aboard. At least there had to be bodies, certainly, because nothing had left the satellite. Forty-seven men had come up here. The bodies were probably all pretty close together. He stopped thinking about that because it only made it difficult to keep on looking. He opened the next door, and there was nobody there either.

He began to have an awful suspicion.

He went cautiously, stealthily, from room to room, made a full round of the doughnut. He never saw anybody. In some rooms there were a number of shoes on the floor, and clothes were strewn around haphazardly, the way men will do when they are living close together. Here was a pipe lying for no apparent reason in the middle of the floor. Here was a chessboard, laid out on a table with a game half completed. Everywhere there was a general sense of confusion, as if these men had suddenly dropped what they were doing and run away. The further he walked, the more he saw, the more fantastic it became. In one room he found four pairs of shoes sitting on the floor, four complete suits of clothes dropped over them exactly as if--

"Dundon!" he cried.

--as if the men in the clothes had ceased to exist.

III

Sometime during the night the door of the truck opened and another body was laid beside Ivy on the floor. Until then Ivy had believed that whatever was going to happen at the end of this ride would be reserved for her, and she thought she knew what that happening would be. With the addition of this new body, however, which was also a girl, Ivy was not so sure.

She was completely paralyzed and she could not move a finger. Beside her the other girl did not move either. But she, this other one, was also young and pretty, and Ivy began to think through her terror.

Rape, to Ivy's mind, was the most likely possibility. She fled from the thought. That she was being abducted for other, more permanent reasons was also possible, but she had no idea what they could be. Kidnapping for ransom money was out of the question. Her parents were not wealthy and she herself had only about thirty-three dollars in the bank. The only other thing she could think of was that she was being abducted into white slavery. She made a futile attempt to scream.

Two more bodies, both young girls, joined her in the truck before morning. White slavery began to look horribly believable.

At last the morning came and the truck stopped, and the doors at the rear were thrown open. Ivy was the first to be lifted out.

She found herself being carried up the side of a heavily wooded hill, toward a long low house half-hidden in the pines. She had a chance to look at the man who carried her, and at the other men who were gathered at the back of the truck, and one thing struck her immediately.

All of the men were old. And they all looked strangely alike. They were quite small and round-shouldered, every one of them, with large peculiar eyes and thickly lined faces. There was about them an almost brotherly resemblance, particularly about the nose, which was invariably tiny, thin and sharp, like a small beak. The eerie regularity of their faces was unnerving. She began to realize that there was something here which was more than just abduction.

She was carried into a long house, and once again she was laid on a floor in darkness. She could not see anyone else but she could feel the presence of bodies, row on row of other bodies. Back in the truck she had tried to cry, but it hadn't worked. She tried again now.

After a while she felt the paralysis beginning to wear off.

* * * * *

Web was now very tired and he sat down. He had gone through the whole station and there was nobody aboard. Forty-seven men, all gone. Dundon had said nothing had approached this station, or left it, but the forty-seven men had, and that was for sure. And he knew that if he bothered to check the other rocket, the lonesome rocket that had come up first, there would be nobody in it either.

"Web."

"Yep?"

"Did you check the space suits?"

"Yep," Web said wearily. "And I counted 'em. They're all here. All in the lockers, never been touched."

"How about the escape pod?"

"That's here too. But they couldn't have got away in that anyway. Radar would have seen it."

Dundon was silent. In the background Web could hear an argument going on. Some of the really high brass were with Dundon now, listening in. Well, Web said to himself gravely, but with a trace of cheer breaking through, the rest is their problem. I've done my job. I think right now I had better go home.

He called to Falk, to let him know that he was coming, and began to retrace his steps, reeling in his radio wire. Falk didn't acknowledge his call, so he called again.

"Joe," he said happily, "I'm a-comin'. Let's clear out o' here."

Falk didn't answer.

"Joe?" Web said.

Nothing.

"Joe?"

He stopped dead in his tracks.

"Dundon," he said thickly.

There was nothing from Dundon either.

He was completely alone.

* * * * *

In the face of emptiness, surrounded by nothing, as alone as any man will ever be, Web waited. He heard nothing, saw nothing. Within his suit the thumping of his heart was an endless chain of bombs. He decided that he had to get out. He was all the way up the turret before his mind cleared and the unrushing wave of claustrophobia fell away, and he realized what had happened.

Falk hadn't answered. But then, neither had Dundon.

"Well hell," he said aloud, sweating, "so the radio got disconnected." The whole thing had gone blank. Now, if it was just Falk who hadn't answered....

Weakly, he leaned against the airlock, breathing with huge gulps. A plug was out in the rocket, or down at the base, or a tube was blown, and for this reason he had very nearly made a fool of himself. For all he knew they could hear him. He began to talk anyway, questioning, liking the sound of his voice in the really absolute silence.

He stepped out of the turret looking for Falk. He had had a rough day, and it was time to go home. To his great relief he saw Falk standing a few feet away on the turret's side, his magnetized soles gripping the metal and his head looking out toward the stars. He was not hanging on to anything, he seemed to be totally unconcerned, and his arms were lifted strangely.

Web whistled. Now there, he said to himself, is a man with nerve. He slipped hand over hand down the turret to get to Falk and the taxi.

Falk didn't move as he approached. Falk just kept looking at the stars.

"Come on boy, Web said aloud, let's get moving." He came up and laid his helmet against Falk's, so they could talk to each other.

But he didn't say anything.

Directly in front of his eyes was the plate of Falk's helmet, and inside the helmet was nothing.

Web withdrew. The empty suit before him swayed slightly as he brushed it.

This is ridiculous, Web said. I'm going nuts.

Around him moved the whirling stars.

I'm screwy as a jaybird, Web said.

* * * * *

The arrival of Kunklin and Prule was neither coincidental nor particularly fortunate. There is an indescribable something which a spaceship traveling at speeds beyond light does to the fabric of space, warping, shredding, leaving a trail which lasts for many days. Kunklin did not need a great deal of luck to pick it up, as he did, just a short way in from Alpha Centauri. He was equipped with a ship of the Central Repair Command, one of the most diversely powerful mechanisms ever produced by a living mind. Thus Kunklin and Prule arrived with great haste, but with no great luck. They were too late to prevent the deaths of the forty-seven men--for death it was--or the death of Joe Falk.

And so it was that while Web was sitting numbly on a projection of the turret, making a mortal effort to control himself, he became watched, in turn, by two separate sets of alien eyes.

The first set of eyes--which were more or less human in structure, differing only in their purple color--belonged to Kunklin and Prule. They had swept in a wide arc around the crescent-lit limb of the Moon, and halted at a discreet distance to survey the terrain before going in. Telescopes of an impossible resolving power picked out first the station, then the rockets, and eventually Web Hilton. Because they had a knowledge of the aliens, and of the type of crime that the aliens would commit, they knew at a glance what had happened aboard the satellite.

But, at the sight of it, Kunklin was startled.

"A space station!" he cried. "Well I'll be jetted." And not yet having noticed the empty suit of Falk--the arms of which had begun to float out helplessly, like a beggar--Kunklin regarded the doughnut with a delighted interest.

Prule, a square, gloomy man who was always the more sober of the two, grunted darkly.

"They put up a space station right in the midst of being plundered, poor devils. They must have walked right into it."

It was Kunklin's turn to be sombre.

"There's been killing."

"Undoubtedly," Prule growled with disgust. "The Faktors could not allow these people to be in space. They would see too much. Note the empty suit...."

It was at this point that Web stepped out of the turret and saw Falk.

Kunklin watched curiously.

"A Faktor?"

"No. One of the people of this planet. Note the primitive equippage." Pause. "This is extraordinary."

"You mean because he's alive?"

"Of course. The others are dead. Why is this one still alive?"

Kunklin was the younger one, cocky and in many ways indolent, but he had by far the quicker mind.

"He is alive," Kunklin said swiftly, "because he is a Galactic. Let us go down."

The second set of eyes that was observing the satellite did not see Web come out of the turret. The brain behind those eyes was rejoicing as it approached the satellite. The plundering was very nearly done. All that remained now was a brief investigation, and then destruction of this station, and the bone and blood and magnificent flesh of these people would remain in free supply below, unwarned and unaware.

The alien landed on the skin of the doughnut, switched off his gravity pack, and walked cheerfully around toward the turret.

And at the turret, of course, Web Hilton was still sitting, slowly regaining his mind. It was at that moment occurring to Web that if there was a logical explanation for all this it would not be found up here, or by him, and he was just then considering the quickest way down to Earth--via rocket or escape pod in the station. He had not quite made up his mind when he saw the alien.

It is difficult to say which of them was the most surprised.

The alien had been under the impression that anything human that had been on the satellite no longer existed. Indeed, there was no possible way that anything human could exist on the satellite. So therefore, Web Hilton was not human. The alien was shocked.

But for Web, who had recently undergone some extraordinary events, this was by far the most fantastic of all. For the alien was an adaptation. An artificial oxygen-producing mechanism in his chest, together with silicone-adapted skin and a number of similarly ingenious devices, enabled the alien to walk freely in space, which he did clad only in a short white cloth and a gravity pack. And what Web saw come walking toward him over the surface of the station, in open space, with the moon and the stars for a background, was a naked man. The alien wore no space suit.

The door behind him was open, Web fell back into the turret.

When a great many impossible things have happened to a man within a very short time there comes a jumping-off place. The man jumps outside himself and continues to survive by examining the whole thing from outside, with a sort of awed detachment. It was this way with Web.

"I am nuts," he kept saying to himself, insistently, as he rolled down the landing net and came up with a thump against the door below. But he did not feel nuts. His mind had been numbed and dulled at the edges, but for some reason now outside it he was thinking very clearly. For the disappearance of everybody there was no explanation, but for the appearance of the naked man there had to be. The suspicion which he had first heard back at the base, over many a beer, was truth to him now, because he had to believe his eyes or go mad. And there was only one thing the naked man could be. An alien. A thing from another world, as the movies put it. A thing with cunning and science. A thing that had destroyed Falk.

Now think, he said to himself carefully, bolting the door behind him. You are no match for them. You don't know how many of them are out there or what they have. Maybe this is the first time they know you are alive and somehow they missed you when they got Falk. So get out.

GET OUT.

He raced through the station, heading for the escape pod. He had to get down to Earth. With what coherence he could muster, he had to tell somebody about this, although it did not yet make any sense. But it would, it would, it would have to. The naked man had been a man, yes, but he had white round marble eyes and a knifelike, inhuman nose. If they were on Earth, his kind could be found.

Web lowered himself into the escape pod, strapped himself down and pressed the button. The pod shot down from the station, down and away, and a great orange flame spread out from its bow. It lost speed quickly, steadily, as the rockets pushed it back. After a while the flames died out. The pod began to fall.

IV

Just as Ivy could feel the ability to move returning, the old men came for her. She realized with despair that they knew quite well how long the paralysis would last. They helped her to her feet and walked her out of the building. Their hands were dry and raspy and surprisingly strong.

Outside it was late in the morning and the sun was high. She was on the side of a mountain, looking down into a peaceful valley. They led her around the low building into a shaded area farther up the mountain, where she saw several more buildings, much smaller than the first. The first, she thought, was a clearing house.

"How do you feel?" said the man on her left, grinning. "Do you feel very good?"

He stressed the 'good' for a reason she did not understand. Apparently the word meant something to him. His grin was wide and his teeth showed remarkably white and firm. The other old man was grinning too.

"I'm hungry," she said. She did not ask these men why she was here. She thought she knew, and if she didn't she would find out soon enough.

"Very soon," the first man said, "if you are good enough."

Now again she did not know what he meant, but this was more obvious. The way he spoke, his grin fading, was particularly horrible. Before she had a chance to say anything more she was ushered into one of the small buildings beneath the trees.

She found herself in a room with several terrified girls, and two more of the old men. These looked even older and were much more businesslike.

One by one, too frightened to struggle, the girls were stripped. Like doctors, the two old men examined them clinically. There was an oldness, a foul and slimy something about these gaunt men that was almost overpoweringly horrible. She wanted to run, or to scream, or just to fight, but she held herself in and waited for the right moment.

She was allowed to take her clothes off herself, was pushed and prodded for several grisly moments. At last she was led naked into another room, where a massive machine of glass and metal was wheeled into place above her, and set to a deep, jarring hum. After a few seconds she was given back her clothes. Then she was taken outside into the sun again, where the other girls stood waiting.

The same two old men took her arms.

One bent over and looked closely into her eyes, his nose almost touching hers. He was grinning now with great joy.

"You were good enough," he said happily, "now you will eat."

She stared at him, revolted as his dry rough hand ran down her arm. Then she saw something which made her understand.

Five girls had been in the building with her.

Only three had come out.

* * * * *

The controls of the escape pod were pre-set. It checked its fall with controlled, measured bursts, fell quickly and steeply until it bounced off the atmosphere. Once in the air the stubby wings took hold and the pod began to glide, blasting from time to time to slow itself down. There was no light in the pod, and Web rode all the way down in a silent, rushing, horrible blackness. He had plenty of time to consider the fact that the pod had never been used before. It had never even been tested. Well, he thought philosophically, if it did not work he would undoubtedly never feel the end.

That did not help at all. He waited, falling.

Not long before the pod hit he began to hear the air scream past, and he braced himself. The braking rockets cut loose for the last time. There was one great rending crash, a series of enormous pops like corks being pulled on the biggest bottles in the world, and a really awful, shattering, bone-mangling impact. And then the pod was down.

In the last moment Web had closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw light streaming in through a large crack above him.

It's all busted up, he told himself dazedly. Better get out. He unbuckled his straps and poked himself fearfully. The hammock had held well enough, but it had been designed for a much smaller man. When the pod hit he had sort of flowed over the edges of the hammock, there were long numb lines all over his body.

But the pod might just possibly decide to burn. He crawled out painfully, but as quickly as possible.

Outside it was mid-afternoon. A desert afternoon. The sun was high and white-hot, blinding. He closed his eyes, trying to accustom himself to the glare. He thanked both God and the engineers that the pod had apparently come down where it was supposed to come down--in the great empty area in Arizona. Radar would have followed him down, therefore rescue trucks were already on their way. They would cross the rough terrain in a couple of hours. A helicopter should be here even sooner. He breathed deeply and a bit more easily, beginning to feel much better.

It occurred to him at last that he still had on his space suit. He took off the helmet, regretted it almost instantly.

The air-scorched skin of the pod by his side was glowing a brisk cherry red, radiating slow thick waves of boiling air. Web walked quickly away in the sand. The October sun was hot, but the pod was even worse. He looked around in the desert, beginning now to feel very tired, looking for a place to shelter himself, to rest until the relief came.

He walked off over the nearest rocky hill, searched among the huge boulders. Distances were deceptive. He had walked quite a way before he found two gray slabs which leaned together and formed a dark opening beneath. He made sure that he could see enough of the desert to know when the relief trucks came. Then he crawled inside.

He had just settled himself to wait, his eyes closing, when the pod blew up.

The sound came at him like a thundering wall. He whirled to face the desert.

Where the pod had been rose an enormous, greasy, ball-topped cloud. The explosion was overwhelming. The whole land shook as the concussion rolled over him, the sky and the air were black around him. After a while the dirt and the rocks began to rain down in a heavy brown splatter and he huddled in the rocks.

Atomic. They were after him.

He started to rise, agonized and tensed, thinking about the aliens and about radioactivity. But before he reached his feet his mind took hold of him and he stopped.

There was no where to go. If he stepped out into the open he would be seen at once, seen from practically any distance. He looked up into the sky, past the tall black column of smoke. Nothing.

He sat. Maybe they hadn't followed him down. They might not have had time for that. Friction was friction, they could travel through the air no faster than he could. So probably what they had done was send some kind of missile after him. It could not have come down much faster than the pod, it would have burned up, so what it had done was give him just enough time to get out. He thanked God that he had.

He leaned weakly against a rock. After a moment he crawled as deeply as he could into the darkness. There was still no place to go. The aliens might be very close, and he could take no chance on missing the relief trucks.

He was becoming rapidly very tired. If he did not want to have to walk all the way out of the desert, he would have to stay right here. Boy, he said to himself painfully, wearily, you got big trouble. He sat down to brood, too tired to remind himself that he had volunteered for this business.

In a few moments he was deeply asleep.

* * * * *

When he awoke it was dark and quite cool and the stars were out. He was instantly alert, peering off into the blackness, listening for the rescue trucks. He crawled out from the rocks and stood up, peered off into the night.

There was no moon, but off in what would be the east was the first bluish glow of the rising sun. That told him at least how long he had slept, and he kicked himself. It was somewhere between four and five in the morning. The truck would have been here long ago.

He walked away from the rocks, looking for a high point on which to stand. They wouldn't have gone away, damn it, they'd have enough sense to stay and look around. Although if they thought he had been in the pod....

Holy smoke, he said with a sad despair, I've got to walk home.

He hadn't eaten for a day and a half. He hadn't had anything to drink either, or even a cigarette. He was beginning to feel it. He made his way up through the rocks to a high, flat bulge, stretched himself up and peered out hopefully.

The trucks rose up about a mile away. Three black hulks, vague and square and unmoving.

Web shouted out hoarsely, with relief and delight. He stumbled back down the rocks in the darkness, reached the soft sand and began to run like a sprinter. They'd waited, bless 'em. The sound of a human voice would be, at this moment, magnificent. He could taste the hot coffee as he ran, the steaming hot coffee and the rolls. They were probably all around him, searching. He shouted.

Nobody answered. It was becoming light quite quickly and although the ground was still dark the silhouettes of the trucks stood out black and clear as he came over the last rise.

He stopped in his tracks, kicking up sand.

The trucks were wrecked.

He crouched tensely, feeling for a gun that wasn't there.

Nothing moved in the blackness around him. The trucks were all black and empty. After a moment of waiting in the deep silence he moved forward slowly.